Sunday, February 1, 2009

BATHROOM RESEARCH







Keeping with the integrity of this old bungalow is a constant challenge.



THE SINK
The sink in our bungalow is a great pedastol sink. There is rust by the drain and the water overflow (the rust is in the same spot as a very similar sink at the Kohler Museum in Kolher, WI) so first step will be talking with the pros who do re-glazing. If they tell me that my sink is not fixable, then we have a whole new set of questions. Do we get another pedastol sink or do we do something with a cabinet underneath? Do we start to make the bathroom more contemporary? We do like the asian style sinks....but then will this wreck our mission of keeping the integrity of the bathroom. It just seems keeping with the style of this house is the way to go.
THE TOILET
We have the original toilet (I think). It's working great accept for some minor issues with the flapper slides up and causes the water to run. We just slide it back down and its fixed. Bad news is I just learned that to flush this toilet it takes approximately 5 gallons of water! EWW! Contemporary toilets only take 1.6 gallons of water. Talk about leaving a carbon footprint!
The good news is I found a contemporary toilet that looks identical to the one we have. Instead of 'Rockford Brass Works' it will have 'Lydia' from deabath.com. It is about $900. I'm glad to know its there.

3 comments:

Christopher Busta-Peck said...

If you hadn't noticed (I hadn't) DEA Bath is also an excellent source for parts to keep that old toilet operational.

Additionally, you happen to be sitting by one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world, so getting plenty of water for that toilet is not such an issue as it would be in, say, Las Vegas.

Jen said...

There is something that I bought once that removed the rust stains in the fixtures of our old old house (former) . It was a paste. Hummm. It took a couple of applications, but it came off, then I waxed the sink with car wax.

Also if you search houseblogs there is a type of peroxide that you can buy at beauty supply stores that cleans old fixtures and tiles.

And.. The plastic tiles are a wanted item for some of the mid century re habbers. I did not know that when I sent our Pink ones to the landfill.

Ken Bloggins said...

I am not a reglazing expert, but I think your sink is definitely repairable. We have a cast iron sink in our upstairs bath with similar rust. I called a number of professional reglazers and the price quotes were obscene in my opinion, so I decided to redo it myself. I used CLR to take off the rust. My sink was so corroded that there was quite a bit of material missing. I replaced the missing bits with Loctite Hysol 1C, which I think I actually purchase on DEA Bath's website. After sanding it smooth with the original surface, I used a product called Surface Repair to blend in the repairs with the original surface. I was lucky enough that the surface repair color matched the original glaze almost perfectly.